


give it a shot

by zhujungjungting (runswithchopsticks)



Category: NU'EST, Produce 101 (TV), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-18 05:11:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13674927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runswithchopsticks/pseuds/zhujungjungting
Summary: “Are we really dating,” Minhyun says, and his tone is flat, something between a statement and a question. He hadn’t meant for what he was pondering to fly out of his mouth, but then again, he doesn’t exactly regret it either, because in terms of it being a question, it is a very valid one.





	give it a shot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knightsofthesun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knightsofthesun/gifts).



> hello uh i hope you enjoy this pls i'm not sure where i went with the prompt but nonetheless i feel that it turned out all right...?

“Fuck,” Minhyun whispers under his breath.

“Don’t let the kids hear you saying that,” Jonghyun hums from the other side of his desk, aimlessly stirring his spoon in his canteen of soup.

“We’re university professors, not high school teachers,” Minhyun mutters, rolling his eyes. He’s just accidentally jammed the stapler after trying to smash the thing into the stack of papers in his hand -- apparently, the device cannot handle a packet the thickness of a centimeter. “And besides, you are supposed to be helpful right now, Jonghyun.”

“During my lunch break? Never.” Jonghyun smiles, lifting his spoon to sip.

“You do not teach any afternoon classes,” Minhyun says, pointedly. He is now settling for attempting to tape the packet of papers together. “That is the only reason why I invited you into my classroom and my office. So you could _help_ me.”

“Not because I’m your friend?” Jonghyun asks innocently. Nonetheless, he sighs, pushing back his chair and standing up. “How many packets?”

“Well, none now, because of the damn stapler,” Minhyun grumbles. Jonghyun simply chuckles at his misfortune, before casually sauntering out of the door to Minhyun’s office with an idle notice of going to fetch his own stapler -- it would generally be a helpful offering, but Minhyun knows Jonghyun’s office is essentially in an entire other part of campus. This is just his friend’s excuse to leave Minhyun lonely and to probably start the first half of his class without any sort of assistance from Jonghyun.

Minhyun is a very capable man, and he has quite mastered the art of being intimidating whenever the necessity to do so should occur. But also by being a rather mature and stiff character, he has never been able to grasp how to properly deal with the youth of the era. Colloquial terms and mannerisms fly right over his head -- and that very much so includes his students’ offward ways of attempting to flirt with their stone-handsome philosophy professor.

At the beginning of each class, Minhyun is lucky if only one or two students approach him with sly questions on their tongues or awkwardly written codes in their homework sheets, and so therefore Minhyun has essentially made Jonghyun his shield by having him collect homework at the beginning of class in order to ward off any stray and misled children.

But because Jonghyun has now left him defenseless and full of openings, Minhyun braces himself for a head-on assault. He’s most definitely not going to leave unscathed.

Well, it seems that today, Minhyun receives an apple ( _What a cliché,_ he thinks, inwardly rolling his eyes), and several odd glances, because Jonghyun is nowhere to be found. He thinks maybe today the kids are not as restless as they usually are, but then a brave new soul steps up.

She is some girl Minhyun has never seen before. Maybe she is a transfer for the new semester, Minhyun thinks, but then again his class is a year-round one.

“Do you have a wife, sir?” she asks, and Minhyun thinks that if she is asking him a question like this, she might as well drop the ‘sir’.

“No,” he offhandedly replies. “Miss, are you aware of which unit within the book we are re--”

“That is quite a shame,” she interrupts casually, as if she’d never heard Minhyun in the first place. Minhyun nearly gasps and places his hand over his heart -- nobody, let alone a very placid and sweet-looking girl, has ever interrupted him so readily and easily.

“Miss,” Minhyun begins, once he has recovered his breath. He clears his throat. “If you would pl--”

“Oh, Professor Hwang doesn’t have a wife, you know, because--” Jonghyun sticks his head through the doorway, waving a stapler in one of his hands. “--he’s got a boyfriend.”

“Huh?” The girl asks, raising an eyebrow, “Uh--”

Jonghyun smiles cheerily, flouncing over and simpering up to Minhyun’s side. He knocks the stapler onto the back of Minhyun’s head, who growls and winces and tries to swat Jonghyun away, but Jonghyun just airily shys away from the advances.  
“It is me,” Jonghyun hums, “his boyfriend. Please do not hit on my lover.” He smiles charmingly, the curves of his lips very harmless. If this girl knows who Jonghyun is, Minhyun thinks, then she has to be aware of the fact that Jonghyun can be a greasy little slug who dumps salt in the cookies he bakes for co-workers. Otherwise, he seems like the professor you can easily step on, until you figure out that he conjures up some magical class fee _just_ for you and the deans can’t really do anything about it.

When Jonghyun receives no response, he chuckles softly. “Now, where may your homework be, miss?” he asks, outstretching a palm. “Chapter six’s review questions are due today, you know.”

“I just j--” the girl begins, but Jonghyun interrupts her.

“Your homework?” When all that greets him is even more silence, Jonghyun sighs, shaking his head. “Please go sit down,” he says, rolling his eyes and picking himself up off of Minhyun.

The class is stunned silent, and the scraping of the metal chair legs against tile floor is strangely ominous. Minhyun sighs, taking the stapler from Jonghyun’s hand and beginning to pound through packets as Jonghyun flips through the pages of the most recent homework packet and pretends to know what he is talking about.

* * *

“So we are dating now,” Minhyun states flatly, after class has ended.

“At least the students believe that,” Jonghyun replies nonchalantly. He drops a pile of papers in front of Minhyun. “I bake you non-salted cookies on a regular basis and sometimes you clean my cat’s litter box for me. We might as well be an old gay couple.”

“Fair enough,” Minhyun laughs with a snort. “I just hope the word doesn’t spread too far into the staff. I don’t know how administration will think of two professors dating each other.”

“Taeyang and Hyorin are married,” Jonghyun points out. “What matters if we’re supposedly dating, then?”

Minhyun shrugs. “They were married before they began teaching here.”

“Then later we’ll have a wedding. On campus. Invite all our students, including that one miss that tried to sit herself in _my_ spot.” He laughs softly, putting air quotes around the word _my_ \-- “Our suits will be the colors of this school, the ties will have Carrie the Cardinal patterned on them--"

“Please go away,” Minhyun interrupts sternly. “We are getting divorced, by the way. I’ve rejected your offer of marriage.”

“How can we get divorced when I’ve only just offered to marry you?” Jonghyun points out with a smile. Minhyun huffs, grinding his teeth, and he turns away. His next class will start in four minutes, and Jonghyun had better be quiet about the “relationship” -- it simply was a ruse to fool that one girl, and now Minhyun wishes for Jonghyun to just go back to collecting homework and chewing on the eraser of a pencil intimidatingly.

Of course, Minhyun thinks it will all just pass. His students normally give him that, because they either 1. Think their professor is very attractive and thus he gets some slack, or 2. Know that he is a very elderly man at heart and you should not trample on the elderly. But of course, being young and vivacious, some of them can be relentless.

“Are you sure you are gay?” The same girl asks the next day. She narrows her eyes. She must be able to tell that Jonghyun is lying, Minhyun thinks, and he sighs inwardly.

“Ye--” he begins, because he might as well live up to the damn lie at this point, if it will make this girl stop bothering him.

“Yes, we live together,” Jonghyun interrupts breezily, as he passes by and sets down a stack of textbooks atop the table next to Minhyun, “he’s _so_ gay. He picked out our china patterns and it takes us a total of twenty minutes every night just to get into bed because of all the extravagant pillows and cushions he buys. You know, the rose-gold ones with the embroidery and the _tassels._ ”

“Tassels…” the girl whispers, and her eyebrows furrow.

“Yes,” Jonghyun says, stonily, tilting down his head knowingly and eyeing her, “the _tassels._ Now, miss, could you please hand me your homework?”

As the girl reaches into her folder and extracts a couple of sheets of lined paper, she murmurs, “I hope the tassels are not too bothersome, Professor.”

“Not at all,” Minhyun replies, frowning, and Jonghyun hums as he wanders off, presumably into the back room to go and retrieve his notebook.

It is not entirely a lie that Minhyun picks out Jonghyun’s pillows and cushions. Ever since six years ago, when Jonghyun was a poor graduate student, he’d been sleeping in deflated memory foam that had been indented into the shape of a body curled into the fetal position. It all changed when Minhyun decided to buy him a pillow set for Christmas, and somehow that morphed into Minhyun buying him some pillow and cushion and throw sets every Christmas. Jonghyun does not complain, because at least Minhyun has the audacity to choose the decent 800 thread-count pieces instead of the scratchy 400-count ones, and for once the pillows don’t happen to be covered in sequins that flip sides with the swipe of a palm or with fake boa feather-like material. But really, it is most definitely true that he spends an extra several minutes every night rearranging himself in his bed so he can accommodate for his tasseled and ruffled companions.

Well, now the secret is out to the rest of the class, Minhyun thinks. They know that he buys Jonghyun’s pillows. They might as well actually be an elderly married couple.

Obviously, the whole joke _should_ just stay within this specific class of Minhyun’s, but of course, because there are students, things can scatter easily. Gaggles of girls begin to giggle when they see Minhyun interact with Jonghyun -- really, it is no different than how they usually interact with each other, because _they weren’t dating in the first place,_ but for some reason every little action is amplified into “squeeeeeeeeeeeee!” even if it is just Jonghyun almost stapling Minhyun’s fingers to the papers as he aggressively slams down the metal bar and prays he doesn’t jam the thing again.

Nowadays, if a student brings a coffee for Minhyun, they also bring one for Jonghyun, and Jonghyun, being the sometimes slimy (but the sweet kind of slimy) person he is, will proudly present two empty coffee cups in order to ward the kids off, although Minhyun still later takes the coffee because oh golly does he need it even though it is much past the morning.

Honestly, Minhyun wonders if the kids are just dumb or he and Jonghyun are actually playing it off well. Actually, to be honest, it is almost all Jonghyun, and Minhyun is doing nothing besides what he normally does -- sit in his chair, sigh, and lecture.

“When is the wedding?” he one day hears, and there is none other than Kyulkyung, one of Jonghyun’s teaching assistants, sticking her head around the doorway and flouncing in. At the moment, Minhyun is browsing pillow sets on Amazon.

“Would you like curtains, or something?” Kyulkyung asks, “I’ve heard about your pillow-buying obsession, Professor.”

“It is not an obsession, Kyulkyung,” Minhyun sternly states, returning to the home screen on his phone. He’d close the tabs, but there were a few sets in colors and schemes Jonghyun doesn’t have, and so therefore Minhyun will take an extra look later. “We do not need curtains either.”

“Oh, you have bought them already?” Kyulkyung asks casually. She leans against the edge of Minhyun’s table. “Then silverware, I suppose?”

“We are not getting married,” Minhyun says, with a sigh. He uncrosses and re-crosses his legs. “We are not ev--” He closes his mouth, and Kyulkyung raises an eyebrow.

“Oh, is there trouble in your relationship?” she hums, and then she leans down, propping an elbow up on the table. “If I’m not intruding, Mr. Hwang, maybe I suppose I can advise you?”

Minhyun is trying his hardest not to roll his eyes to the back of his head. Kyulkyung appears to be genuinely worried, but all he wants to do scroll in peace.

“Please, Kyulkyung--” Minhyun begins, and now he’s leaning a cheek into one of his palms, looking somewhere between irritable and desperate.

“Oh?” Kyulkyung raises her eyebrows, “Professor, is it something b--”

“I just want to--” Minhyun weakly begins, the skin between his eyebrows crinkling, “I j-just want to buy pillow sets in peace…” he murmurs, because what else is he supposed to say?

Kyulkyung just throws her head back and laughs, sound giggly and tinkling. “Okay, okay, I will leave you alone,” she says. It is none of her business to comment so, but she wonders why Mr. Hwang is buying yet another pillow set, because she is quite sure Jonghyun confirmed to her that he does indeed have much too many cushions atop his mattress.

* * *

Later in the day, Jonghyun asks him why he is looking up pillow sets again. Jonghyun was very serious when he said that it did take him many minutes per night just to arrange himself properly in bed.

“Would you rather me buy you curtains?” Minhyun asks. “Or silverware?”

“Wow,” Jonghyun huffs, crossing his arms. “We really do sound married, don’t we?”

“It is a valid question,” Minhyun painstakingly points out. “We’re adults. Curtains and silverware are lovely gifts, Jonghyun.”

Jonghyun cracks him an uneasy smile, but he nonetheless just shakes his head and continues to eye Minhyun’s bookcase up and down as he searches for a novel to read. There is nothing for the two to do for a whole half an hour until Minhyun’s next class. Normally they either read or discuss the latest happenings on the newest episode of whatever show Jonghyun seems to be into that week. Minhyun has no clue what he is talking about a good ninety-five percent of the time, but he still entertains his friend by nodding along and pretending he knows the barest bones of the plot.

Well, that is supposed to happen today, but Minhyun is scrolling through his email inbox on his phone when he opens an unread message and sighs, rolling his eyes. He immediately regrets it, because for a moment it feels as if his eyeballs may stick to the back of his head.

“Can you be a little more deceitful?” Minhyun asks.

“‘Deceitful’?” Jonghyun raises an eyebrow, turning around from the bookshelf. “I thought you complained too much about me being ‘slimy’, and now you wish for me to be even more so?”

“That student just emailed me asking if I would like to have coffee with her some time,” Minhyun mutters. “Apparently I am not gay enough.”

Jonghyun snorts. “I didn’t know you were gay in the first place, Minhyun.”

“That’s not the point,” Minhyun sighs, resting his chin on a palm, “just please do more of your slimy stuff next time, Jonghyun. I can’t believe I am asking you this, but then again in the past we have not had any students be this persistent.”

Jonghyun throws his head back and laughs. “Then I suppose next time I will try to make us look even gayer,” he states, throwing Minhyun a thumbs up.

So that is what Jonghyun does, and he’s really throwing his all in it, Minhyun thinks. Minhyun doesn’t really do anything but sit in his chair, read off of a screen or a text, and sometimes adjust his glasses, but Jonghyun will flit around him and give him kisses on the cheek (which Minhyun is quite sure is illegal in a classroom setting, but it doesn’t seem to bother any of the students -- in fact, some coo at the shows of affection) and make googly eyes at him, which make Minhyun inwardly frown, although it is not because he does not enjoy the attention (it is rather the opposite for him); he just isn’t used to it.

When was the last time he had a person dote on him? He asks himself, and he crinkles his eyebrows together because he is sure the last person to dote on him was his mother -- or maybe it might have been Jonghyun’s cat, if a cat can even dote.

Really, he is quite not used to someone putting their hands on his shoulder when he’s sitting down in his wheely chair at the front of the classroom and patting down the collar on his dress shirt.

One day, it just so happens he is reading ugly student essays as the kids are penning down another one, when Jonghyun stalks up to him, clears his throat very loudly, and puts his hands on Minhyun’s shoulders (for the third time that day). Of course, almost all the heads in the room look up, and all of a sudden there’s Jonghyun’s fingers slinking around Minhyun’s collar. He leans down, and Minhyun can feel him breathing on his cheek.

“Your tie is lopsided,” Jonghyun states, and the tips of his fingers slip beneath the knot of Minhyun’s tie, easily wrapping around and tugging at the silk. Minhyun sits, frozen, staring straight head with his oddly placid expression. He can see the students in the room raise their brows at him, although some have turned his heads away.

“There we go,” Jonghyun says, with a smile, and he gently pats Minhyun’s shoulders, running his palms up and down Minhyun’s biceps once before he retracts himself and wanders over to the bookshelf. The minutes of silence that pass after make Minhyun feel a little odd, even though it is supposed to be silent anyways. He figures he is just tired, and when Jonghyun sits down on the table beside him to read, Minhyun stares at the book cover in Jonghyun’s hands and wonders why in the world Jonghyun is reading _Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms_ again.

* * *

Later that evening, Jonghyun invites himself into Minhyun’s apartment with no warning. Well, Minhyun does get a warning -- sort of, really, because it is just Jonghyun texting him that his little sister has some leftovers from a catering event and that Minhyun had better like bean casserole.

Minhyun is just watching TV when Jonghyun walks right in carrying a glass platter and a bottle of wine with him. Minhyun doesn’t even give him any proper acknowledgment besides a muddled “Good evening,” which Jonghyun returns with, “I really do hope you like bean casserole.”

It is no new thing for Jonghyun to invite himself over and proceed to do whatever he wants. If Minhyun had more than a hundred-fifty square meter apartment and Jonghyun didn’t have a cat, then maybe he’d actually try to move in and then Minhyun could count on someone to pay half the rent and organize his packets in on his desk just like Jonghyun does anyways.

For today, they will eat the bean casserole from Jonghyun’s sister, and Jonghyun is stalking around Minhyun’s kitchen trying to find where a stray pan is so that he can properly heat up the leftover porridge so that it isn’t lumpy.

As Minhyun watches Jonghyun from the couch, he squints and thinks Jonghyun reminds him of this mother in this scenario. She was always forgetting where in the world she put the spatula, except this time around it’s a wok instead of a spatula -- how does one lose a wok, anyways?

But besides that, half an hour later and Jonghyun is popping the cork to the bottle of wine as he pours two glasses and sets them on the coffee table before bringing over the casserole dish and bowls of porridge.

Some remake of Sex and the City ends up airing, and Minhyun honestly finds no point in watching this. He’s seen the original four times over because he’s had to chaperone for his little sister and her friends that just love stupid over-dramatized movies about fake relationships and petty squabbling. But it seems Jonghyun is enjoying it anyways -- or, well, sort of, because he’s tucking himself up into a ball with the throw that Minhyun’s mom knit (it was a while ago, anyways, and at this point it has just become Jonghyun’s designated blanket because Minhyun has his own fleece thing and he can’t stand the scratchy wool), chewing on a forkful of bean casserole as he leans onto Minhyun’s shoulder.

For a moment it passes through Minhyun’s mind, how they would exactly appear at this second. Together, on the couch, with bean casserole and porridge, watching Sex and the City, and Jonghyun might as well become part of Minhyun’s home because he already is anyway, maybe not physically but certainly in Minhyun’s heart and mind -- and besides, that blanket that’s wrapped around him smells like some mix of him and the general scent of Minhyun’s home, because nobody but Jonghyun touches it.

They could really appear to be an old married couple at this point, Minhyun notes, and his nostrils twitch. Certainly, they’ve been close friends for enough time to have been married.

“Are we really dating,” Minhyun says, and his tone is flat, something between a statement and a question. He hadn’t meant for what he was pondering to fly out of his mouth, but then again, he doesn’t exactly regret it either, because in terms of it being a question, it is a very valid one.

“Yes,” Jonghyun replies, looking at him, and there’s the quirk of the corners of his lips that occur whenever he’s trying to tease an answer out of someone, although he doesn’t use the tactic with Minhyun often because he is aware he can just go ahead and ask if that was really Minhyun heaving in the bathroom or it was some poor sport who had too much cocktail shrimp.

“Okay,” Minhyun says -- an accepting answer, because he doesn’t know how to bring up the question of whether that glimmer in Jonghyun’s eye is just mocking him or there really _is_ something, and they actually have been married this whole entire time.

It haunts Minhyun’s mind for the remaining week, even though it really needn’t because he swears he’s comfortable with the answer Jonghyun gave, although of course there’s a part of him (that he refuses to acknowledge) that wants to know if Jonghyun is truly, genuinely, _serious._ He acts like he is quite serious, bringing Minhyun lunch in class (that Minhyun paid for… sadly), giving him kisses on his head, and stroking his cheek (in the middle of class too, mind you, and Minhyun sometimes wants to swat away the offending hand, but he oddly likes being stroked like some oversized animal). But Minhyun always forgets to ask, or he remembers to ask at the wrong times (do you really want to break off suddenly during lecture and ask your fake teaching assistant if you guys are really in love?)

One afternoon, Jonghyun returns with iced coffee, and Minhyun’s just about to grab it and nonchalantly sip on it when he accidentally shoves the straw right into the soft of his inner upper lip. He scowls in pain, and brings the cup back down, only to realize he’d just tried to shove two fat green straws into his mouth.

“Why are there two?” he questions, looking up at Jonghyun, who is absentmindedly re-organizing stacks of papers on the desk.

“We are to share, of course,” Jonghyun blatantly states. “I didn’t buy a Trenta Cold for nothing.”

Minhyun raises an eyebrow. This is new. Is Jonghyun trying to play it up for the kids or is he genuinely wanting to share?

“You could have just gotten one straw you know,” Minhyun notes, and he says it quietly, because he knows he’s testing the waters in _class_ of all places. Thankfully, the classroom chatter is loud enough that much of what the two at the front of the room discuss flies over students’ heads.

“Sorry,” Jonghyun replies, shrugging, and he smiles and winks at Minhyun. “I’ll _definitely_ do that next time.”

Minhyun wants to roll his eyes into the back of his head because Jonghyun sounds oddly stupid saying it like that. He really wants to ask him again if they’re actually dating, because now Jonghyun is attempting to wiggle his eyebrows and Minhyun wants none of this -- or at least, none of this _right now._

He has to wait until the students pile out of the classroom, and then there’s a quick five minute break before the next set of kids should be arriving. The Trenta Cold iced coffee is still sitting there on the desk, a good three-fourths left. Jonghyun reaches out to grab it, but Minhyun whisks it away from his reach before he can do so.

“Hey--” Jonghyun begins, but he’s paused in his speech because Minhyun has drawn a straw out of the cup and is now proceeding to lick the leftover whipped cream off of it.

How do young kids these days do it? Minhyun asks himself, because he’s about 0.3 seconds from dropping the straw and scowling. Jonghyun is _laughing_ at his poor attempt, because Minhyun is very genuinely old at heart.

“One straw,” Minhyun says, scowling slightly, handing the cup to Jonghyun, and Jonghyun snorts as he sips as a result of leftover laughter.

“Are we dating,” Minhyun asks, in the same flat tone he had before, when Jonghyun puts the cup back down.

“If you’re going to attempt to flirt with me like _that,_ then no,” Jonghyun hums, huffing. He swings his legs back and forth, jabbing a finger in Minhyun’s direction. “My _mother_ can do better.”

Minhyun fake gasps. “Oh, so you really want to bring mothers into--”

“No!” Jonghyun cries, throwing his hands up. “Just please be better at flirting next time.”

“‘Next time’?” Minhyun raises his eyebrows. “So you think there will be a next time?”

“Well, we are dating, aren’t we?” Jonghyun prods, doing that weird quirking thing with his lips again, and now Minhyun is beginning to grow even more confused than he really needs to be.

“Are we dating,” he asks again, monotonously, and Jonghyun frowns.

“I just said he were,” he replies, and this time his tone is serious. He places an index finger on his chin. “We might as well be married at this point, though.”

“Oh,” Minhyun murmurs. “So we really are dating. Am I allowed to kiss you now?” That last line was sort of a joke -- a _real_ test to see if Jonghyun really is joking or not, because Minhyun knows that his slimy self is very good at playing deceit, and even after all these years of knowing him sometimes Minhyun himself gets caught up too.

“Go right ahead,” Jonghyun laughs, and he leans down and sticks his face right up in Minhyun’s breathing space. He smells of the coffee he just drank, and Minhyun would find this odd except for the fact that the only thing going through his mind at the moment is that he might as well do so and kids Jonghyun, because after all, they’re an old married couple, right?

So he kisses Jonghyun, and Jonghyun himself tastes like the coffee too, or maybe it’s just because there’s coffee on Minhyun’s own tongue, but it is nonetheless sweet and kind of frothy like the whipped cream. It is not as strange as he’d once imagined, and Jonghyun’s laughing against his lips because apparently Minhyun is dead as stone when he kisses.

“We are dating,” Minhyun says, when they pull apart and now he’s back to breathing non-coffee-and-Jonghyun infiltrated air, “we are dating, and it is not just for the children.”

“Yes,” Jonghyun affirms, nodding, “although if you wanted to get children, I wouldn’t disagree.”

“No,” Minhyun murmurs, and it’s a half sob because he realizes that if he is dating Jonghyun, that means he has already adopted a child that is Jonghyun’s cat, and therefore he now has more cat litter scooping duties.

He supposes he will survive though, anyways, because after all, he is now dating Jonghyun (or might they be married?) so at least there will be someone to always find his woke for him while he scoops the cat litter.


End file.
